


I still reshape myself into something you will miss

by hellcsweetie



Category: Suits (US TV)
Genre: 7x01, 7x06, 7x10, Angst, Character Study, F/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:54:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25626274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellcsweetie/pseuds/hellcsweetie
Summary: Donna's reaction to Harvey's relationship with Paula.
Relationships: Donna Paulsen/Harvey Specter, Paula Agard/Harvey Specter
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7





	I still reshape myself into something you will miss

_In a universe where every_

_broken thing is not a reminder of us,_

_I still reshape myself into something you will miss._

\- Zohra Hussain

*

**Before**

Donna asked for more, and when she did, she wasn't sure what she was asking for. She wasn't sure what was on the table, what she could have, what would make her truly happy.

But she is COO now. And nothing has ever felt more right in her life since she decided to quit acting. She doesn't know if she would have belonged on a stage after all, but she sure as hell belongs here, in her own office with her own door with her name on it. Donna Paulsen is a COO and she feels like every single minute she spent giving out advice, managing crises and steering people in the right direction has led her here. With a title that fits her talent for once, and for the whole world to see.

For the longest time she thought her official role didn't matter because everyone that mattered knew what she was really worth. But she has been through the wringer. She saw one of her closest friends go to jail and she helped him get out. She almost went to jail herself. She watched the firm she has been working at for twelve years crumble to the ground and she had an integral role in building it back up. She was never just a simple secretary and she refuses to spend another minute letting the world peg her as anything less than she is.

She is Donna, a name and a title all in one. And now she finally has something to show for it.

She asked for more and she wanted this and she is so unspeakably happy. But Harvey comes to see her in her office twice, and he tells her she's going to be one hell of a COO, and that she has never let him down, and it shakes her. It shakes her because she is not his secretary anymore, and he is not her boss. He never treated her as an employee, always as an equal - as a partner -, but there is no denying things are different now. 

They have always been a power duo but she has spent a decade in his shadow and even if between four walls they knew titles meant shit, to the world she was still lesser. Not anymore. Now he is managing partner and she is COO and they are light and free and things seem in place; things seem right.

And so she thinks, maybe. Maybe the more she asked for ends up giving her more than she bargained for.

*

**During**

The subpoena came at the best and worst possible moment.

She scrambles to get her head straight because she just told Rachel it's not a big deal but Rachel is telling her about how they might have to testify in court that Louis sexually harassed someone and she cannot follow a single word her friend is saying. 

Finally, she gets a grip on herself. She listens to Rachel, they align strategy and the girl tells her she'll talk to Katrina and try to figure something out. And then she is left alone with her paperwork that is decidedly not going to get finished tonight.

The subpoena was a welcome distraction, but when she gets home she can't avoid the topic anymore. 

Harvey is seeing someone. And she didn't know.

Without even trying, her brain takes its natural route and starts trying to unpack the situation and process it. She said it herself, she should have seen it coming and she didn't. Not the Paula part, because there was no way that she could have known it was her.

But she had seen the signs. His skittish behavior - not the type he has when he is doing something he knows she will disapprove of, but the type he has when he is trying to coddle her, to make sure not to worry her about something she should worry about. It happened with her dad, it happened with Liberty Rail, it happened right before she left. It's happening again now. And the concern she saw in his eyes should have comforted and reassured her, but it made her feel fragile and hysterical instead. And she couldn't let him know he was right, so she lied to him and pretended she already knew.

She should have seen it coming, from the way he was acting and from the Ferrari and from the ties and the hair and whatever other gimmicks she likes to have.

She should have known he was going to run again.

She should have known that he would see the other More too, the More she didn't ask for but is now afraid she might want. She should have known that he would see it and he would run and hide and backtrack like he has been doing forever. Nothing ever means anything with him, not his reactions to her boyfriends, not his protectiveness, not even his 'I love you'.

She didn't ask for that More, she asked for this More, and he gave it to her and so she is not upset at him for running. She is upset - disappointed, really - at herself for not knowing he would. She is disappointed at herself for thinking they could finally be on the same page, that he would have a life-altering realization like that all on his own despite having depended on her for that for the past thirteen years. 

She is disappointed because he gave her the signs, showed her his hand, and she didn't realize what he was doing. Because she didn't want to realize. For the first time in their entire relationship, what she wanted from him had felt like something she could have, because she is officially his equal and he has made peace with his mother and because he has grown so much lately.

And even though she hadn't dared to hope, she had dared to wonder. If now would finally be the time for them, after all the bullshit and the worry and the fighting. If now it would finally be right.

But he is seeing someone else. And it bothers her that he is, but it bothers her more that she let herself hope when she should have known better. She knows him better. He is not letting her down, he is just being his usual self, this time with no clear expectation from her.

The person she knows best in the world acted exactly like he always has and she was still disappointed because she deluded herself into believing differently without even having a reason to beyond her own foolishness. And that is a bitter pill to swallow, one she doesn't know if she can yet.

*

She spends most of her day dodging Harvey and trying to distract herself with work to little avail, until her talk with Rachel. Opening up helps immensely, because Donna is a firm believer in naming your demons so you can fight them, even if she doesn't always follow that advice herself. And by the time Louis leaves her office, she knows what she has to do.

She loops the keyring around her finger and prepares for something that, for some reason, she never thought she would have to do. She knew, objectively, that she wouldn't be allowed to keep Harvey's key forever. Either because he would move somewhere else and would probably not give her a copy of the new key, or because they might stop working together at some point, or any other completely plausible reason why a person wouldn't have another person's house key even though they never even go there.

But she hadn't really thought about not having it. She has had that key ever since there was a key to be had, even through her time working for Louis she never gave it back and he didn't ask. It was just one of the millions of unspoken understandings they had.

Now she knows she has to do this, because she no longer has a right to unlimited access to his place.

They talk and it's awkward and tentative and there are mentions of Stephen and being bothered and the famous "it doesn't mean...". But the worst part is actually placing the key on his desk, the copy he made himself and slid over to her the day after he got that apartment, the apartment she helped him pick. She didn't always carry the key with her, but she kept it in her drawer and she knew it was there. And from now on she'll know it's not.

In a way, parting with that key feels a bit like parting with him. She knows he's still there, they are still friends, but beyond anything, beyond even her feelings for him, this was a tether between them, an access she didn't often make use of but that both knew existed between them. But now Harvey is trying to build something with someone and she needs to let him do that.

Louis said breaking down the wall of denial is what allowed him to move on with his life and she thinks that's what she needs too. Harvey is not hers. Harvey wants to be with someone else, someone who he's serious about, someone who he might want to give his key to. And so Donna shouldn't have that key anymore.

Besides, she is no longer his secretary. He can't ask her to grab something from his place before they meet in court, or to bring him documents to sign or to do whatever unusual things he used to ask of her because their relationship was so unique. She has no use for his key anymore. Whenever she does end up going to his apartment, she will go as a guest, not as someone who belongs there. 

She hadn't really thought about all that becoming COO would entail. It had taken her such a herculean effort just to muster up the courage to ask for a seat at the table that when she got it, she was simply ecstatic. But now she realizes that not being Harvey's secretary means not working directly with him anymore. Not sitting outside of his office, keeping an eye on him at all times. No listening through the intercom and cracking jokes. These days she barely sees him around the office and her advice feels more like nagging than it used to. They're not at odds as often as they were at the very beginning, but all the fun they used to have together is gone too. Now they're... colleagues.

She used to focus so much on Harvey's dependency and how smothered she sometimes felt by it that she hardly ever stopped to consider what she got from being his secretary. There was the frustration and the disappointment and the stifling, but there was also the partnership and the closeness and the light. And as much as she has gained from her new position, that is something she lost. And the key she no longer owns is proof of that.

So she forces on a smile, forces herself to actually mean it when she says she is happy for him. She wants him to be happy, that part is real, but she can't honestly say she is happy. But she will have to be, because she cares about him and he cares about this, so she does too. 

When she sits back in her chair, sans key and sans tether, she feels more disconnected from him than she's ever been. She loves being COO, truly feels like she was meant for it, and it wouldn't have prevented Harvey from seeking out Paula, but right this second, as she reels from the loss of an idea, she wonders if she should have stayed his secretary. She wonders if she made the right choice.

*

Paula is there in his office, like she belongs there. Like a dutiful girlfriend who remembers anniversaries and knows what to get him and where to go for dinner. Which, Donna supposes, is exactly what she is. 

This is ridiculous. Donna shouldn't be feeling like this. It's not a secret that Harvey loves Carbone and Paula is his girlfriend, for Christ's sake, it's not a surprise that she would know that. But while past girlfriends would have gone to Donna for gift ideas and restaurant recommendations, Paula doesn't. Because she knows him; she doesn't need Donna's help.

And just like that, Donna feels like she loses the only edge she has ever had. Throughout their whole time together, Donna has been the person who has known him the most. And no matter how many women rolled around his bed, even Zoe or Scottie, she was still the only one who knew him this well. Who knew about his mother and his brother and his father and all his hopes and aspirations and, most importantly, his fears. Others have gotten close, but none as close as Donna.

Except now there's Paula. Who used to be his therapist.

It suddenly occurs to Donna, with an accompanying wave of nausea, that Paula might know even more about him than she does, because while they were having sessions, she was busy leaving him. All the months she spent away, he spent with her. And she knows nothing happened back then because he would never do that, and presumably neither would Paula, but the fact is Donna stepped away while she got closer. She helped him through his panic attacks, he talked to her about the firm, about his family. Probably even about Donna herself.

Donna had always managed to be okay with the others because they never felt like competition. She might not have what they had, but they didn't have what she had either. Except now... Now someone has it all, and it's not her.

Paula understands him. She knows him, even the dark little corners of him he doesn't like others to see. And she knows him in ways Donna does too, as well as in ways she never will. Paula knows about Lily's infidelity and what Harvey looks like in the morning. She knows about Jessica and the power struggles at the firm, as well as what he wears on weekend dinners. She knows about his job and his dedication and his stubble and his TV habits. 

She knows all about the façade he puts up for the world to see and about his soft underbelly, the one he lets out at home at night, or in Boston, or under sheets. Paula managed to cross the bridge between both worlds, and Donna used to take comfort in the knowledge that it was okay if she hadn't crossed that bridge herself because no one else had either, but now that's not true anymore.

It's not that Harvey is with someone. It's that Harvey is with someone who can replace her. 

And Donna doesn't want to be replaced. Mostly because she's not sure she can replace him right back.

*

**After**

Afterwards, after Paula and Mark and Louis and Sheila and Mike, Donna will feel dread. A terrible, suffocating dread like she has never felt. A dread at second-guessing her life and her choices and her feelings. A dread at wondering if she got it all absolutely, horribly wrong all those years ago, if all the things she thought were important really weren't. She'll feel dread at questioning whether she set herself up for failure, if she robbed Harvey and her of unspeakable happiness. 

She'll wonder if she can move on from him, if she wants to, if he wants her to. She'll wonder if this is her last chance.

And so, she will kiss him. She won't even let him finish his sentence, she will just stand up, walk to him and wrap her arms around his neck and push her lips against his. 

She won't know that she'll do this until Harvey is standing in front of her and suddenly there is nothing else she could possibly do instead. She will kiss him and feel his warmth and notice he kisses her back, even if just a little bit. She'll try not to dwell on what that means.

And then they will part, he will go home to someone who isn't her and she will wonder if he wanted to keep kissing her as much as she wanted to keep kissing him.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I just wanted to make a small clarification: in 5x11, when Donna tells Harvey she is coming back to him, he asks her how she got into his apartment and she says Jessica taught her how, implying she no longer had his key. However, in 7x06, when Donna gives the key back, she tells Harvey it's something she should have done a long time ago. Considering it must have been roughly a year between 5x12 and 7x06 in Suits time (maybe less), she couldn't have given Harvey his key back "a long time ago" if she had just gotten it back herself. Therefore, I consider this a plot hole and for the sake of this story I chose to stick to the 7x06 version of events :)


End file.
